


No-one but you (only the good die young)

by thesmokinggnu



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Freeform, very mild warning for blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 13:37:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5498984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesmokinggnu/pseuds/thesmokinggnu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke falls from the sky, Lexa is Earthbound</p>
            </blockquote>





	No-one but you (only the good die young)

**Author's Note:**

> Title stolen from the Queen song. Sorry, Freddie.

 

 

Clarke grew up with books. She read Defoe and Dickens and Narnia and stared down at Earth through the porthole watching her breath steam up the glass around her fingertips. Books that talked about Truth and Law and Mercy like trace elements or scientific constants: empirical and universal and _there._

 

Lexa watches her brother die of sickness that cannot be cured and sees her mother waste away as the crops drowned two years running.

Her every decision is rationalised; lives and territory and assets converted to ruthless values and dispassionately weighed against each other.

Emotion can have no added value: she knows how the beauty of a thing cannot feed a village through the winter on an earth where gold is no match for steel.

Years ago there was a landslide in the North which turned up coins of yellow metal like early snowdrops in the black soil. She had held one in her hand: the metal turned out to be soft and scratched easily and was left behind in the dirt when the camp moved out the following spring.

 

When Clarke walks into Tondc for the first time her hair shines like the sun.

 

 

*

 

 

_“I am soaked in Grounder blood. Take me.”_

The second time they meet Clarke is begging for life, then for death.

 

The life of a murderer in exchange for the safety of the Sky People (as far as it is within Lexa’s power to guarantee) is not a decision that should merit any kind of debate. She wonders what this boy can possibly be worth – or whether it speaks more of the value Clarke places upon herself. She had observed the boy being taken into the holding cells – the only interesting thing about him was how utterly unexceptional he appeared.

Watching Clarke kiss Finn Lexa identifies the nagging feeling as disappointment. _Love._ It’s such a banal explanation.

She had wondered idly whether the boy had some kind of gift or status among the Sky People: whatever kind of hidden value he had – like granite breaking open to be filled with perfect crystals – to make him worthy of mercy, of eighteen innocent lives.

Finn’s blood drips from Clarke’s hand as she stands straight backed against the flaming torches and Raven’s screams.

Her generals are all watching her. Lexa is uncertain for a long heartbeat.

“Blood has had blood.” The Commander delivers her verdict. No-one will dare to countermand it.

 

It only occurs to her later that maybe the knife in Clarke’s sleeve wasn’t intended for Finn. The thought keeps her awake until dawn.

 

 

*

 

 

Clarke frowns in her sleep.

Away through the forest the gorilla roars, and Lexa loosens her knife in its sheath. Moving causes her broken collarbone to shift and she grits her teeth. The makeshift sling had come undone as they ran and she had tried to fix it herself without asking Clarke. The commander of an army should be perfectly capable of adjusting her own bandages.

It didn’t seem to be quite right though: the weight of her arm pulled on her shoulder and she leaned back into the tree trunk to try and support her elbow on her abdomen.

She had agreed to wake Clarke to take the second watch but had no intention of doing so. Clan scouts would be out searching for them, and it would not be good for the Sky Girl if grounders came upon her with the Commander wounded and unconscious.

Some of Lexa’s generals would probably be assuming she was dead already if the howls of the gorilla had drifted over to camp. No-one would have expected them to survive that particular encounter.

In her head Lexa has started thinking of this as Clarke’s Law of improbable success: actions that by all rational expectation should end in disaster yet - by some reason she was unable to define but seemed inextricably linked with golden hair and a certain set of Clarke's jaw - somehow delivered broadly the desired result.

Quint was dead, they had escaped the beast, and the alliance survived.

 

Lexa always has a plan. And a contingency plan. She hasn’t survived this long as commander without knowing what each of her generals were about to do and the precise nature and location of their loyalties. She has been bound all her lives by the laws of her people. She is the law.

Clarke walks through their traditions like smoke. She fell from the sky and her landing sent cracks rippling through the Earth. Clarke is a chaos factor that manages to throw all of Lexa’s painstaking strategies to the wind. Or in this case to the rampant genetically modified gorilla.

Lexa has always preferred her metaphors a little more subtle.

 

 

*

 

 

Costia had hair like raven’s feathers and looked at Lexa like she was her world.

Clarke’s eyes are the clear winter sky and the earth shudders to a halt as she storms into the tent and tell Lexa to run.

 

They rest in a clearing that night after the missile. Neither of them pretends to sleep. The air all around smells like smoke, but when the wind picks up the clear sky is visible through the trees.

Lexa’s people don’t have names for the stars. She can pick out easily the one that hovers over the North a red eye to the south that will guide her road.

To Clarke the galaxy in the west is a princess in chains: she sees a hunter and his prey and seven sisters dancing forever.

They both look up and see their way home.

 

 

*

 

 

_“You can’t just kill everyone you don’t trust!”_

Clarke says _can’t_ like _shouldn’t_ because the distinction doesn’t even cross her mind. A part of Lexa almost envies her that.

 

_“And you’re willing to risk everything on that – on your feelings?”_

_“Yes.”_

Another part of Lexa chips away: part of the dam that she’d built with years of training and other people’s blood washes away in the eddies of Clarke’s unblinking certainty.

 

Lexa’s back hits the map table and she’s out of space to run. Her knife hangs heavy on her hip but this close she has at least five ways to kill Clarke without it. The Sky Girl stands face on leaving her body open, knees straight and shoulders square so she can’t twist away. If she has a gun she’ll never reach it in time.

A part of her realises Clarke will face death this way: staring it down with her jaw set and eyes like flint. Lexa can’t look away and thinks that might even work: Death embarrassed and ashamed slinking off while Clarke of the Sky People stands alone in the rubble and smiles in that way that no longer reaches her eyes.

 

When she leaves it’s as though she sweeps the air out with her and Lexa collapses into the vacuum gripping the map table like it’s the only solid thing left in the world.

 

She kisses Clarke and the world falls away. She kisses Clarke like it’s the last thing she knows how to do in the last few seconds of almost-peace before Bellamy’s signal burns against the sky, while the world begins and ends at Clarke’s chapped lips and the feel of their bodies pressed together and the Sky Girl’s pulse pounding under Lexa’s thumb where it’s pressed against her neck.

The rhythm of Clarke’s life and hers breathe in and out in-between them before the war intrudes and in the space of a second they’re once again miles apart.

 

If all goes to plan and her people are saved, then Clarke is lost to her already.

 

She tells herself in the end none of it will matter anyway.

 

 

*

 

 

Mount Weather falls at the end of summer.

Indra takes over command in Tondc and Lexa rides for Polis, to attend her duties she has too long neglected since the Sky People arrived. Months of council meetings follow: there are disputes to settle and trade agreements to be renewed. She rides out with patrols to secure the Eastern border against desert raiders who are growing bolder and organises aid to the lowlands when the autumn rains cause the rivers to overflow into flood plains.

She returns to Tondc on the first day of winter and frost snaps beneath her horse’s hooves. She does not ask if there is news of Clarke.

Lexa takes to rising in the dark and watches the dawn from the hill above the camp. The pale road winds away through the forest and remains empty.

The watchtower above Camp Jaha is supposed to guard the gate, but sometimes Lexa recognises the dark silhouette stationed there with his rifle staring away to the East.

When spring descends with the meltwater from the mountains, the Commander and her entourage ride for the capital.

One week later a lone hooded figure arrives at the gates of Camp Jaha.

 

It takes a further week for Indra’s messenger to reach Polis. Seated on her throne in the great stone hall something inside Lexa unclenches.

 

As the roads clear after a long winter Clan leaders and their representatives from the outlands begin arriving in the city. The business of the past winter keeps the Commander occupied for many weeks. When it is finally all dealt with she seeks out more work, and mundane everyday tasks that have always previously been delegated suddenly receive the Commander’s personal oversight.

When at last summer is more than halfway done she acknowledges that the inevitable can no longer be put off.

As is always the way when delays would be welcomed the weather stays dry and the paths are clear. She sits stiffly on her horse and the animal can sense it and fidgets.

Finally the forest opens out into the valley floor and Tondc lays waiting under the harvest moon.

 

 

*

 

 

Is this how Finn felt? Lexa wonders.

_I will encounter darkness as a bride and hold it in mine arms._

This not the same Clarke she left at the mountain. This girl wears the lives she took around her neck like stones, begging someone to lead her to the river.

The line of the knife against Lexa’s neck feels hot rather than cold and she knows it has drawn blood.

Lexa won’t apologise. She’s not sorry.

“You betrayed us. You betrayed all of us.”

“I did not kill any of your people.”

The knife presses deeper and she feels the blood roll down her neck. Lexa aches to pull Clarke to her.

“Fuck you.” Clarke’s voice breaks into a whispered snarl. “ _Fuck you, Lexa._ If you hadn’t left -”

“The outcome would have been the same.”

“You can’t know that!”

Lexa closes her fingers gently around Clarke’s but makes no attempt to pull the knife away. “I know, Clarke. I know also it is little comfort to hear this from me, but I would have made the same choice.”

“You’re right. That is no comfort.” She is searching Lexa’s face for something. “I don’t know how you live with this.”

“I can show you.”

Over Clarke’s shoulder she can see the silhouette of her guard outside the tent. “ _Is all well, Heda?”_

Clarke may not speak the language but the meaning is clear.

“Well,” Lexa breathes an inch from her lips. “That is up to you, _Clark kom Skaikru_.”

 

 

The edge of Lexa’s blade is soot-blackened but glimmers faintly iridescent as she removes it from the candle flame.

“Are you ready?”

Clarke is lying face down on Lexa’s bed and she nods tightly gripping the furs in her fists. Her shirt and chest binding are discarded on the floor and there is a light sheen of sweat on the bare skin of her back.

Lexa settles herself astride Clarke’s waist and presses her hand gently against the Sky Girl’s spine in the valley between her shoulder blades.

She makes the first cut on the ridge of her scapula and Clarke tenses beneath her hand but doesn’t make a sound.

 

It takes just over an hour to make three hundred and forty one cuts. Half of Clarke’s back is covered in notches and blood pools in the valley of her spine. Her breathing is rapid and shallow and her eyes remain closed. She flinches as Lexa delicately presses gauze against the wounds.

“It is done.” She intends to stand and leave but instead leans down and brushes her lips tenderly against the back of Clarke’s neck.

“Sleep now.”

She wanders the camp until dawn, and when she returns to her tent Clarke is gone.

 

None of Lexa’s advisors mention the medical dressing on her neck.

Octavia stares for a long moment then nods almost imperceptibly to herself as though satisfied.

 

 

*

 

 

The night of the winter solstice is clear.

The Sky People linger on the side lines eyeing the celebrations with some trepidation. Lexa stands overlooking the revels as the pipes and drums rise with the smoke from the bonfires. The music is fast and pounding and thrums through her blood.

The delightfully bewildered expression on Clarke’s face as she emerges from the crowd sets alight something in Lexa. She bares her teeth in a broad grin below her war paint and Clarke looks even more confused. 

“What’s the matter, Sky Girl? Haven’t you heard music before?”

“Not like this.” The bonfire below reflects in Clarke’s wide, dark pupils.

Lincoln and Octavia charge past hand in hand laughing wildly and hurl themselves into the dance.

With a whooping war cry Lexa follows and doesn’t look back for Clarke. On nights like this she doesn’t have to be the commander; can almost forget and be forgotten in the whirling revels with her people.

The dance is fast and foot-stomping and utterly incomprehensible. The drums speak of the woods and the wild; the white rush of water and the first blood of the hunt.

Then Clarke is there in front of her, something fierce and hungry in her gaze.

Lexa remembers that the Sky People lived on the ground once: their blood ran in the black earth, the salt in their bones and their tears formed veins in the same rocks where they now stand.

 

Clarke takes her hand and pulls her away from the light.

She kisses the shell of Lexa’s ear, breathes something that isn’t forgiveness but for tonight could almost be forgetting.

Clarke’s lips map her jaw and her hands find the fastenings of Lexa’s robe. Clarke looks different in the moonlight. It’s not something Lexa has ever considered: the difference between fire and burning cold; the distance of oceans between Helios leading the dance in blazing gold and Selene forever trapped half in light and shadow.

Lexa doesn’t feel the cold when the buckles yield and she’s bare to the waist under Clarke’s gaze; her goosebumps are unrelated to the lateness of the year when Clark traces the tattoo that spreads like a vine of ink claiming Lexa’s side from the jut of her hip to the bottom of her breast.

Despite the long winter spent in the wild Clarke’s body is still softer than Lexa’s; her hips are fuller, her stomach doesn’t have the abdominal ridges from years of battle training and when Lexa succeeds in ripping off her shirt she sees the pink skin of new scars like markers of innocence lost.

There is an invisible bump below Lexa’s neck where she was too impatient to let her collarbone heal properly. She likes that Clarke is the only person who knows it is there when she claims it with her teeth, pinning Lexa’s wrists under her hands and hips with her own.

When she grows impatient and twists out of Clarke’s grip it’s the first time Clarke hasn’t fought her. She scrapes Clarke’s nipple with her teeth and hands fist in her braids and Lexa doesn’t feel the pain because Clarke is gripping her so tight and her nails dig into the raised scars on Lexa’s shoulder that mirror the fresher ones on Clarke's.

They fit well at last, the two of them, with their matching rows of tombstones tangled together on furs where they have both bled.

When Lexa kisses her Clarke’s mouth burns harsh like liquor and sweet like lost summer.

 

 

There is new frost under Lexa’s boots as she climbs to the ridge. It isn’t quite dawn yet: the sky is a purple bruise fading to palest blue on the horizon.

Over the last year Camp Jaha and the grounder village have begun to bleed into one another, individual tents and smaller dwellings gnawing away at no-man’s land. In five years, or maybe ten, perhaps there will be no gap, like two halves of a wound finally knitted together.

Lexa’s not surprised when Clarke emerges from the trees. Maybe it’s just the morning and the residual alcohol but she feels as though Clarke would find her at the end of the world.

Clarke has a dark smear of second hand war paint at the side of her nose and Lexa knows there’s an identical smudge on the inside of her thigh.

“Hey.”

“Good morning, Clarke.”

For a few minutes they stand in silence. They don’t touch but Clarke is close enough that Lexa could take her hand if she wanted.

Eventually Clarke interrupts the songbirds. “We need more land. Marcus has some ideas about crop rotation, and with the plants my mother needs for the hospital there isn’t enough space at the moment.”

“What?” Lexa fumbles to marshal her thoughts into some sort of order. “I will have to discuss it with Indra. I’m sure some arrangement can be reached.”

Clarke smirks at her. “Thank you, _Heda_.”

Lexa smiles back and considers her next words. “You may know this already, but each of the clans has a representative in the capital to advocate for their needs and attend council meetings.”

Clarke studies her carefully but says nothing so Lexa continues. “After this length of formal alliance it is only fair to offer to extend the same privilege to the Sky People.”

Clarke turns away and smiles into the orange sky above the distant treetops. “That is a generous offer, Commander. My people will consider it.”

Her fingers brush the back of Lexa’s hand. It could almost be by accident.

 

 

The sun rises after the longest night, and they are halfway through the dark.

 

 

*


End file.
